[dagaetch]

Any critiques on composition or post-processing? I really like the way it pops now, but it does feel a little overprocessed.

processed:

original - https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/members/60664-dagaetch/albums/7079-canadi...cture68791.jpg

[dms]

Very impressive view/very nice colors.
I would suggest you do a perspective adjustment so the trees aren't falling inward (don't go by the big one in the right foreground--as it is naturally leaning). You will lose some of the trees after you crop back to rectangle--but they will still nicely frame the mountain. And also a bit of (more) sharpening.

[nomadkng]

unfortunately you've lost your highlights in the upper left. the grey/silver fringing in indicative of trying to recover from the blow out. the rest of the cloud/clouds are just gone.

from a juried art perspective or if submitting to one of many online marketplaces with approval processes in place, this photo would be instantly rejected because of this.

if you have this image at a diff exposure value where the highlights have been saved, this might be a good candidate for gentle HDR processing. this would have been a great time for a graduated neutral density filter, as well.

the composition itself is good and the subject matter interesting. unfortunately the large number of blown out pixels would relegate this image to MY recycling bin

[dms]

Beg to strongly differ w/ Nomadkng--the image has range from very dark to very light, and if there is an area that is that exceed the ability of the sensor (or film, etc.) then the question is is it what you the phographer want and does it work.

If the featureless white is a cloud strongly illuminated by the sun then it makes sense and works. I think one can throw the baby out w/ the bath water when one narrowly considers criteria such as areas of featureless white are not permitted.

Next time one takes a picture of sun strongly illuminating cloud as here, or water w/ sunlight reflected/sparkle, or sunlight reflected of the icy North Face of the Matterhorn and you do HDR to fix it, you will have ruined the shot.

[MadMathMind]

Very beautiful!

One thing I think could have been tried is to use a polarizer to get rid of the glare and reflections in the water. As it is now, you have some reflection, but not the whole scene. In particular, the treeline that runs through the middle is a bit distracting--because it's isolated and the only part of the right mountain reflected in the water, it looks a bit like a lens flare or ghosting.

If that didn't work, a graduated ND filter would allow you to preserve the lower half of the image while maintaining the proper exposure for the bright sky. Then you wouldn't have had to process to restore the clouds.